


Permission To Stay

by Heroine (Evoxine)



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: Episode Fix-it, M/M, S4E04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2014-10-19
Packaged: 2018-02-21 18:32:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2478275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evoxine/pseuds/Heroine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fix for the episode "Leveraged".<br/>There was just way too much of them throwing each other under buses for me to bear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Permission To Stay

"You always have a choice."   
  
Mike watches Harvey exit his office and walk past Amy's desk with a pile of stones in his heart; a split second later and he finds himself opening his mouth.   
  
"Harvey," he calls, "wait." 

Harvey pauses on the steps. 

Out of his peripheral vision, he sees Amy's eyes flick back and forth between his face and Harvey's at a seemingly impossible pace. Pushing her out of his mind, Mike waits for Harvey to turn back around. Strong fingers tighten around the railing - the action doesn't go unnoticed by Mike. 

"Harvey," Mike tries again, "please."

Amy shifts in her seat as Harvey turns and walks back up the small flight of stairs. His stride back into Mike's office is supposed to appear confident and unshaken, but Mike sees through it easily. 

"What are we doing, Harvey?" The words come out soft and weak to Mike's ears, and judging by the slight furrow of Harvey's eyebrows, Harvey's heard it too. 

"What do you mean?" 

Sinking down into his chair, Mike presses the heels of his palms hard against his eyes and takes a deep breath. He hears Harvey settle down into a chair opposite him and he glances up.

"What are we doing to each other? We're ripping each other's throats out again and again but _that's not how it's supposed to be_."

Harvey's fingers stop drumming against his thigh. "How _is_ it supposed to be, Mike?"

"I don't know; anything but this? I never thought I'd be doing anything but helping you, working with you -"

"You left, Mike."

Harvey leans back, and suddenly it seems as though the weight of the world is pressing down on his chest, telling from how exhaustion seeps into the lines around his mouth and how his eyes fog up with something Mike can't quite figure out. 

"I may have left the building and the job, but I never left you, Harvey. The thought of continuing to deal low blows just to land funding and win over you makes me sick to my stomach. I know we're just doing our jobs, but -"

"Then just keep thinking of it that way. Nothing personal, right?" Harvey rises to his feet, and Mike can't seem to find anything to say in response. Harvey looks at him, gaze loaded, before he buttons his suit jacket and heads for the door.

"Good night, Mike."

 

* * *

 

His meeting with Forstman is in fifteen minutes, but Mike can't find it in himself to step foot into the building. Sealing this deal will give him the funding he needs, but at the expense of what? Yes, if he doesn't sign this deal, he'll more than likely lose his job, but at this point, Mike's not entirely sure that he wants to keep it anymore. If keeping his job requires disgusting schemes such as the ones he's had to pull on Harvey, Mike would rather wash Louis' feet for a year. 

Squaring his shoulders, Mike pulls out his phone and sends a quick text to Amy.

_ Cancel my meeting with Forstman - tell him I'm not going to accept the deal. Clear my schedules for the rest of the day.  _

Feeling oddly calm despite knowing that he's just lost his job and that he might've tossed Gillis and his company into the shitter, Mike pockets his phone and flags down a cab. 

A blur of a ride later, Mike finds himself staring up at the Pearson Specter building.

 

* * *

 

"I'm giving in my resignation letter today."

Harvey's eyes shoot up to where Mike's standing with a hand on the handle of the office door. Behind Mike, Donna's mouth is hanging open and Harvey can see that even _she_ did not see this coming. 

"What?"

Mike can sense that he's venturing into dangerous waters, but he takes a few steps into Harvey's office anyway, setting his briefcase down on the armchair. 

"Did you know that going to work everyday involves putting on a mask? It's one thing to have to lie and charm my way into the pants of my clients' corporations, but it's another thing to win at the expense of ruining the few relationships that are so important to me. It's not who I am; I don't want to hurt the people I love and care about more than I already have."

Harvey stands, the movement fluid. He walks right up into Mike's space and slides his hands into his pockets. There’s a lengthy period of silence before Harvey decides to break it. Mike’s expecting a sharp reprimand for letting his emotions take over his work or something along those lines, so suffice to say, he wasn’t quite ready for what followed. 

"People you love and care about," he repeats deliberately. "People like who?"

Mike can feel the heat of Donna's eyes on his back and he tries not to swallow nervously. The word had slipped out carelessly, and he was hoping that Harvey wouldn't pick up on it the second it did, but of course he has. The waters he didn't want to swim in weren't waters related to work whatsoever; and he's just managed to dive right into the one ocean he never wanted to dip a toe into. 

He takes an instinctive step backwards and reaches for his briefcase. Harvey doesn't try and stop him. 

"I... I need to go write my resignation letter," Mike utters, before turning on his heel and rushing out of the office without looking as though he's _trying_ to rush out. A glance at Donna tells him that he's failed spectacularly. 

 

* * *

 

He ignores Amy's attempts to catch his attention as he breezes into his office. Booting up his computer, Mike drafts a resignation letter in ten minutes and attaches it to an email. He doesn't send it instantly, however, instead choosing to stare at it for a long while. 

The screen blurs in his vision and Mike's suddenly reminded of how the lights of the hotel room had blurred in almost the exact same way the moment Harvey told him he was going to hire him. Excitement, uncertainty, and nervousness had momentarily taken over his mind, and pinpricks of light didn't seem to matter too much at that point in time. The light emitting from the cheap television in his apartment had blurred the same way on a rainy Sunday night when he had finally admitted to himself that he's deeply in love with his mentor just six months after. 

It was surprisingly easy to smother his feelings, what with his immense workload, his responsibilities when it came to Grammy, and the weight of his secret hanging over his head on a day to day basis. But now, with Grammy no longer around and the fact that he's no longer working at Pearson Specter, he's got nothing to quell the feelings that tend to bubble up whenever he crosses paths with Harvey. 

Going to Forstman had been a desperate move, the decision clouded mostly by the pressure of locking down funding and the security of a job. But realising how far the man was willing to go to get back at Harvey was a solid punch to the gut - one that landed over the already painful bruise that he'd gotten after taking the tapes away from Harvey. 

There's a lot more that he'd had to do to Harvey since he'd started at Sidwell, but Forstman was the finger that tipped the tower of guilt over. He'd left Pearson Specter to protect Harvey, and flinging daggers at the man just doesn't seem to make sense in his head. 

A flick of his fingers and the email's shot off into cyberspace. But not a minute has passed before he sees Jonathan storm towards his office.

"What is this bullshit you've just pulled about not signing on Forstman?"

Mike elects to disregard the question in favour of saying, "I quit, Jonathan. I've just sent in my resignation letter."

Surprise flashes across Jonathan's eyes for a moment before they're gone and replaced with a sheet of steel. 

"I don't accept your resignation. But you _are_ fired. Get your shit and get out."

Amy stares at him through the glass. Mike doesn't even have the willpower to apologise to her.

 

* * *

 

He's just dumped his box of things on the bed when his phone rings shrilly. 

"Hello?"

"Mike," Donna's voice floats through the earpiece. "Where are you?"

"Home. I got fired." It’s better to be bluntly honest with Donna than anything but – it’s something Mike has learned over the years. 

A pause. "I'm coming over."

Mike doesn't have the chance to get a word out before she hangs up and leaves the line beeping. 

Sure enough, she shows up twenty minutes later, hair impeccable despite the wind going on outside. Mike isn't surprised. 

"Is something wrong?"

She looks at him oddly and nudges him towards the couch, toeing the door shut behind her as she does so.  

“I think it’s time you should know something about Harvey,” she says, the words coming out of her mouth slowly as she sinks down next to Mike.

“Okay..?” 

She chews on her bottom lip. “Harvey… cares more about people than he’s willing to let on. It takes a lot for him to let people into his life, not unlike the way he’s let you into his. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but when it comes to people he cares about, he’s a lot of bark and no bite – he won’t start a fight, he’ll just continue it. He may _say_ things to make it seem as though he’s starting it, but that’s because it’s his ego talking and not –”

Donna stops to take a breath, but just as she’s about to continue, a firm knock sounds on the door then and Mike just _knows_ that it’s Harvey on the other side of the door. The way Donna springs to her feet tells Mike that she knows, too. 

“Mike,” Harvey says the second the door opens. He looks over at Donna for a brief moment before redirecting his attention back onto his former protégé. Donna slips past him and disappears down the hall without another uttered word. 

“I heard he fired you instead,” Harvey continues, stepping inside without waiting for an invitation. Not that he’d need one, anyway. “Dick move.”

Mike snorts in amusement as he shuts the door. “I know.” When he turns around, he sees Harvey regarding him with a somewhat curious gaze.

“Is Louis still mad at me?” Mike asks, partly out of genuine worry and partly just to keep conversation flowing. He doesn’t exactly do well with pregnant silences. 

“Yes,” Harvey answers easily, and Mike winces. “But I’m sure he’ll get over it when he has time to collect himself and after you have a talk with him.”

“I hope so,” Mike says, walking over to his fridge to pull out a chilled bottle of beer. He offers one to Harvey, who accepts. “I don’t exactly know how I feel about him a lot of the times, but I do think of him as a friend. I wouldn’t want this to hang over our friendship for the rest of my life.”

“Do you know exactly how you feel about me?”

It takes a ton of effort for Mike to swallow his mouthful of beer and to not hack into his bottle. He did not see that question coming. 

“What?” Mike wheezes, “why–?”

“Just answer me, Mike.”

Mike sets his bottle down onto his sad excuse of a dining table and uses the few seconds to try and formulate a semi-coherent response. Wiping condensation off his fingertips with a swipe across his jeans, he looks at the unopened bottle in Harvey’s hand before lifting his eyes to his. 

“Yeah, I do. I’ve known for a while.”

A blink, and Harvey’s just two feet away. 

“And?”

“And it’s complicated,” Mike says, sidestepping the question entirely. 

“I’m insulted that after all these years together, you still haven’t realised that I’m more intelligent than most people.”

“Fine – what exactly is it that you want to know?” 

That seems to catch Harvey off-guard, and Mike takes the opportunity to step around the man and grab his beer. He needs a little more alcohol in his system if he’s going to deal with where this conversation is likely to be heading.

“When you said ‘people you love and care about’ –”

Might as well. 

“Yes,” Mike interrupts. “You’re on the short list. At the top of it, in fact.”

“So you’re saying that you love me,” Harvey clarifies. The bottle in his hand sweats profusely; water droplets fall to the floor by Harvey’s foot. 

“Sure, of course. I love Donna, too. Louis, not so much, but if you press it –”

“That’s not what I mean, Mike, and you know it.”

Beer flows down his throat until he empties the bottle; Mike sets it down and sighs. 

“Are you asking if I’m in love with you? Because the answer to that is yes, too.”

Harvey stares at him for what seems to be the longest time. 

Then Harvey opens his mouth and says, “I gave Logan’s business to Louis the second I walked out of your office the other night. You didn’t have to quit.”

“Forstman would fish for ways to come after you regardless of whether you were working for Logan or not,” Mike replies, shrugging. “And besides, Louis would probably find bigger guns to point at my head, considering how angry he is at me. Me quitting solves a lot more problems.”

“You not leaving Pearson Specter in the first place would’ve prevented all these problems.”

“It was the better move; this way, we’re both protected. Besides, you agreed to let me leave.”

“No. All I did was shake your head. As far as I’m concerned, you left without my permission.”

Confusion seeps into Mike’s head and his eyebrows knit together. 

“I never wanted you to leave, Mike. Yes, I’ve thought of it happening countless times, under many scenarios, and in my head I would always deal with it just fine. But the actual, tangible thought you leaving the firm – leaving my side – was something I couldn’t stomach. That day you asked for my permission? I knew that if I opened my mouth I would’ve asked you to stay, and asking you to stay would just confirm everything I’ve tried years not to.”

Sometimes Mike can be quite dense when it comes to reading between the lines, but tonight, it seems as though the beer has served him well. Stepping up to Harvey’s face, Mike plucks the bottle of beer out of his grasp and pops the cap. Pushing it back into Harvey’s hand, he gestures for him to take a gulp.

“Just say it, Harvey. Stop going around in circles.”

Harvey swallows, exhales, and says, “I love you too, Mike. Have since day one, essentially.”

His heart’s thundering away inside his ribcage, but Mike looks exceptionally calm as he presses the flat of his hand against the lapel of Harvey’s suit. Harvey isn’t as successful at keeping his cool, however, and Mike’s pleasantly surprised when a solid hand comes around to hold the base of his skull steady as Harvey leans in.

When they break apart, Harvey takes a nonchalant sip of his beer and says, “I’m sorry for all the low blows I’ve dealt you over the past few months, but that plan you had to buy Gillis’ company was _actually_ bad. Did I not teach you anything?”

Mike rolls his eyes in exasperation. “Are you never going to stop using that against me?”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This piece is meant to be a stepping stone, so I do apologise for any ickiness you may come across.


End file.
